Journal of

Introduction and purpose: Improved quality of life is considered as the ultimate goal in the care provided for elderly residing in nursing homes. However, there is a tendency to believe that nature of living in the nursing homes is accompanied with lower quality of life. This study aimed to assess quality of life among elderlies living at nursing home in Shahroud city.

Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study employed census-sampling method to include 53 elderlies living in Shahroud nursing homes. Data were collected using Short Form Quality of Life (SF-36) questionnaire and analyzed by SPSS 18 via independent t-test, ANOVA and Kruskal-Wallis.

Findings:The mean score of total QOL was 53.76 (SD=32.10). The highest and lowest quality of life belonged to “social performance” (69.80±45.23) and “Emotional role playing” (32.29±28.13), respectively. In addition, quality of life was significantly (p<0.05) associated with age, gender, educational level and length of stay in nursing homes.

Conclusion: Quality of life among nursing homes residents was low in emotional role-playing, physical performance and general health subscales. Accordingly, designing and implementing appropriate educational and supportive interventions to promote elderly’s QOL are of great importance.